Can't really say I've had bad experiences with any brand. Occasionally someone might release a model that's more problematic than normal, but those are rare. Even a shitty Seagate should last for years. According to Backblaze WD is pretty average as far as failure rates go, none of the manufacturers really stick out except Seagate with higher failure rates and HGST with lower failure rates than the rest.

I could just be extremely unlucky since I kept targeting the same brand and it's possible that I just happened to always find the broken ones. At the same time it's an annoying trend I am just starting to think WD drives just hate me.